miguel de cervantes

cervantes did not grow up dreaming of becoming a writer. his only dream was to become a soldier known for his bravery.

at 24, he achieves that dream. he and his brother join the naval battle of lepanto. the pope declares that all soldiers who fight in the battle will have their sins forgiven. later in life, cervantes will say that using religion for politics is deeply wrong. he will be excommunicated multiple times.

he returns to spain five years later, having lost the use of his left arm in battle. in his pocket he carries a letter praising his courage, written and signed by don john of austria, leader of the holy league.

now his hope is to find work using that letter, even if he only has one functional arm. but as his ship approaches the coast of barcelona, it is captured by algerian pirates.

cervantes is both fortunate and unfortunate. because he is carrying don john’s letter, he is considered a valuable prisoner. a valuable prisoner means a high ransom. but he is also unlucky, because no one back home has the money to pay that ransom.

after several years, just as he is about to be transported to istanbul as a slave (yes, human trafficking is not new), his family manages to gather the ransom by borrowing money from the trinitarian order. after five years as a soldier and five years in captivity, cervantes finally returns to spain.

now his goal is to pay back his family’s debt. he chooses the most promising path: turning the story of his captivity into writing. at the time, theater is the fastest road to fame and income. a playwright with a successful play can make good money. the most successful playwrights even have their scripts printed and sold to growing audiences.

so cervantes’ new dream is to turn the story of his captivity into a dramatic play and make a living. but the theater market is tough. people are tired of heavy dramas, and cervantes cannot succeed there either.

to survive, he takes work as a tax collector. but he’s accused of mismanaging funds, and now he finds himself imprisoned again in his own homeland. prison gives him time to think.

he realizes there is another popular form of entertainment. medieval europe has long adored stories of wandering knights and their adventures: romances.

but cervantes also sees something new happening: printed books are spreading everywhere, and the number of people who look at the world through literature is rising. the world is filling with stories, and in such a world, how people read becomes just as important as what they read.

so he writes don quixote using a completely new literary approach. it is experimental. it does not fit existing genres. it needs a new name. the spanish word novela captures its essence: something new. (this is where the english word novel gets its meaning as both “new” and “a long narrative story.”)

when don quixote becomes successful, cervantes runs into a new enemy: literary pirates. the book is translated into many languages and sent across the ocean to the americas. (it has been about 120 years since europeans began colonizing the continent.) people start dressing like don quixote and sancho panza in the streets. an anonymous writer even publishes a fake sequel, claiming cervantes has no exclusive right to the characters.

cervantes can’t accept this. so he writes his own sequel. the public wants a continuation, and they don’t care who writes it. cervantes makes a clever move: in his sequel, he deliberately contradicts the events of the pirate sequel and even includes a scene where don quixote challenges the “false don quixote.” the fraudulent version fades into obscurity.

but cervantes knows the real enemy is not the pirate writer. the real enemy is the new world created by the printing press. a writer can depend on printers to spread their work, but printers can also reprint a profitable book without the author’s permission and never lose sleep over it. in this new mechanical age, authors are at a disadvantage.

even though cervantes creates a new literary form that surpasses the popularity of romances, he dies poor about ten years after don quixote is published.

today, literature is losing ground to video games and short-form videos. the question is no longer “which book is suitable for children?” but “which websites are safe for children?”

cervantes was the one who began this struggle. don quixote fought windmills; modern writers fight screens.